"Your Silence Will Not Protect You" ~ Audre Lorde

George and the Great White Shark

shark (noun)any of a group of elongate elasmobranch, mostly marine fishes, certain species of which are large, voracious, and sometimes dangerous to humans.

shark (slang)a lawyer. (Derogatory.) : Some shark is trying to squeeze a few grand out of me.

A guy in a bad trouble needs a good lawyer and now Zimmerman has one.

When George Zimmerman replaced his former attorneys with Mark O’Mara, the first thing he did was to go on television and express his sympathies to the family of Trayvon Martin. It was a departure from the bluster and self-promotion Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig engaged in and whose behavior toward their client was so unprofessional SLATE legal writer Emily Bazelon ripped them both in an article called, “George Zimmerman Needs A Good Lawyer.”

Mission more than accomplished. Zimmerman has a good lawyer in O’Mara and the way he’s working over the prosecution in the courtroom and the press on television, he’s real good., and he showed he’s earning his fee as he dropped two jaw-dropping revelations on how much better he is than Sonner and Uhrig in appearances on CNN and CBS.

(AP) ORLANDO, Fla. – George Zimmerman’s attorney says a website created to raise money for his legal defense has raised more than $200,000.

Mark O’Mara said on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Thursday night that he learned about the money on Wednesday and will inform a judge at a Friday hearing.

Zimmerman, who has been charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, was released from jail this week after paying 10 percent of $150,000 bail.

O’Mara says the bail amount may have been higher if the judge knew Zimmerman had raised $200,000.

Welcome to post-racial America. Where you can kill an unarmed Black kid and fools will send you nearly a quarter of a million dollars so you can beat the rap.

In another “better late than never” revelation, O’Mara now concedes his client’s “apology” might not have been the best move (at least now after the fact that it worked). Hey, not bad, slick. It only took you a week to figure out what a lot of us knew as soon as we heard it.

(CBS News) The attorney for George Zimmerman apologized for the apology his client offered to the parents of Trayvon Martin during his bond hearing last Friday, saying he did not understand the victim’s family would find the timing of his remarks inappropriate.

“We had reached out to see if we could do it privately,” attorney Mark O’Mara said on “CBS This Morning.”

Mark Strassmann reported that Zimmerman had asked for a private meeting with Martin’s parents before Friday’s hearing, which was rejected. Their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, said Thursday that requesting a meeting a day before the bond hearing was “self-serving.”

At the hearing Friday Zimmerman took the stand and, speaking to Martin’s parents, said, “I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am, and I did not know if he was armed or not.”

Crump told the press following the hearing that Zimmerman’s apology was poorly timed and insincere. “The apology was somewhat of a surprise because we had told them this was not the appropriate time, but they just disregarded that, and he went and pandered to the court and the media and gave a very insincere apology.”

O’Mara dismissed the notion that Zimmerman’s apology was aimed at the judge whose decision it was to release him on bail, but said he did not realize the family would think it inappropriate.

“My concern is, I didn’t realize that the way [Martin’s family] had responded to me was through a press conference where they said it was too late or not an appropriate time,” O’Mara said.

“To be honest, had I known that – maybe had I seen the press conference – I’m not sure that we would have done it at the bond hearing, because the purpose of it truly was to get to the family and to respond directly to the family’s request. Had I known or been told that that wasn’t the time, it wouldn’t have happened. So, I apologize for that.”

To find justice, the Martin family will need the prosecution to better than they are doing.

This guy is disingenuous enough to be a Republican presidential candidate.

I’m pretty sure Tracy Martin and Sabrina Fulton would like to tell O’Mara exactly what he can do with yet another half-assed apology.

Let’s recap: Mr. O’Meara didn’t know his client’s website had raised over $200,000 until after he was sprung on a measly $150,000 bond and he didn’t know the “apology” his client made in open court to the Martin family was neither wanted nor appreciated until after he heard about it at their press conference.

I have to admit this guy is pretty slick. If O’Mara were any more oily he should have a pipeline shoved up his asshole and we could get gas prices under $3 bucks tomorrow.

I also have to admit I really thought O’Mara was more principled than the two ambulance chasers previously representing Zimmerman. Now I see he’s just a more polished version of the same sort of snake oil salesman. Unlike those clowns who looked like sleazy hustlers, O’Mara is smart, savvy and knows how to work the media as anyone know who watched the bail hearing post-mortems where it was proclaimed he crushed the prosecution like the Miami Heat beating up on a rec league basketball team.

O’Mara is killing it for his client. He ate the prosecution’s lunch at the bail hearing and served it back up to them. They had better step their game up quick because while they’re playing checkers, O’Mara is playing chess.

$200,000 won’t buy Zimmerman his own version of O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” legal counsel, but like 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea, it’s a good start. If he keeps kicking as much butt as he has O’Mara won’t need any other $400-an-hour attorneys to help him. So far he’s tap-dancing all over the other side and if perception is reality, the reality is O’Mara is winning the perceptions game.

Instead of worrying if the defense can find 12 jurors to acquit Zimmerman, it could be tougher to find 12 that will convict him.

For the sake of anyone hoping Zimmerman is convicted for the death of Trayvon Martin, they had better hope the prosecution steps up their “a’ game the next time they square off against O’Mara in court. Boy George has a real shark on his legal team and this one is a Great White.